Do kids still do that these days? It was all the rage when I was a kid.

Before we actually tear into numbers, I want to look at the behaviors I’m expecting from other players. These behaviors will drive much of what they can be reasonably expected to produce in a combat situation.

I’m going to break it down into what I demand, what I expect, and what I want.

Demands are the bare minimum I require. Expectations are just that, although I may not get them. Wants are the icing on the cake.

Demands

That they have the game installed. Pretty self-explanatory. And that is about all I can safely demand. If they don’t have the game installed, the whole point is moot.

Expectations

Here’s where I start getting disappointed. (OK, so I’m probably disappointed that some people have met the demand of installing the game when I would rather they be off playing Hello Kitty.)

Common fucking courtesy. This is a hard one for some people. I don’t need name calling or details about your sexual life or what you think of my lineage. If you’re going to take the time to type something, be pleasant about it, or at the very least not insulting. This also extends to the other members of the party, not just conversation directed at me. If you don’t got nuthin’ nice to say, don’t say nuthin’ at all.

To be there. Not stealth afk or standing in the corner picking their nose while the rest of the party is healing/tanking/pewing. Don’t make me look at recount to see if you’re even pushing buttons. If you have to afk after every pull, bite the bullet and admit that perhaps it’s not the best time to be running heroics with random strangers.

To pay attention. If the healer is OOM, don’t pull. Well, don’t pull if you expect any heals. If you can solo it, go for it. Your repair bill, not mine. If the rest of the party has not zoned in yet, don’t run off in a huff.

To perform the role you signed up as. If you signed up as tank, you best be swapping to that stam gear when we zone in. If you signed up to heal, you best not be running around as a critchicken. Using the fact you are a hybrid just to get into an instance and then failing to perform the role you were assigned will net you a spot in the lower bowels of hell.

To follow direction. This is generally as easy as literally following the tank/healer. Don’t go wandering into the next room and bring back friends. Especially if you’re the healer. If there is a specific mechanic that needs to be dealt with (harpoons on Skadi, etc.) and someone asks you to do it (and you have a clue) do it. If you don’t have a clue, pipe up. Which leads to…

To ask if you don’t know. Don’t know how the fight works? Just say something. I promise that if I’m in the party I will not bite you. Not hard at least. Maybe a nibble… I can’t wait to roll a worgen, I’ll be /biting everyone. I would much rather take 30 seconds to explain a heroic boss fight than spend 2 minutes running back and rebuffing after the wipe to a heroic boss fight.

To know your class reasonably well. This is primarily directed towards utility abilities. If you are a mage, you have remove curse. I swear it’s trainable. I expect it to be on all mage action bars. And I expect it to be used. Same goes for removal of poisons/magical effects/diseases/whatever. If you can do it and it helps the group, then do it. I also expect that some of the other basics are taken care of. If you’re not tanking, don’t have righteous fury/defensive stance/frost presence on. If you are tanking, have righteous fury/defensive stance/frost presence on. Turn growl off of pets. If crowd control is being used, don’t break it. Know your “oh shit” abilities and have them ready.

To not stand in the bad. If you have made it to level 80, I really expect that you have figured out how to tell when you are taking damage. Take steps to eliminate excessive damage to yourself. (Hint: your green bar goes down.)

To be repaired. There are repair vendors everywhere. Take the time from your busy heroic running schedule and pop off to repair before all your shit breaks.

To be prepared. Just like repairing, have your reagents/poisons/ammunition/whatever on hand.

To get through the damn heroic. If all the expectations are met, this can be done. If most expectations are met we can still get through it, I’m not going to bother to initiate a vote to remove you. Although I may choose to agree with a vote to remove you if you’ve particularly ruffled my feathers with poor attitude.

Wants

To be friendly. Crack a joke (that doesn’t involve politics or religion). Offer a “gratz” when cool stuff happens.

To be helpful. If someone is struggling, offer advice in a useful manner.

To work as a team. This doesn’t mean that we need a ready check before every pull, but adapt your speed or actions to go with the flow.

To have fun. I was in a group once that was like, let’s try this crazy thing, you up for it? We failed miserably, but we had a good laugh about it.

To read my blog. It would be really cool to run into someone that knows me through this, it would totally make my evening.

To know your class well. This means you have the basics down and are working on the fine-tuning or are kicking my ass on the charts. I enjoy a little competition now and again.

And that’s about it.

Funny enough, when I really started thinking about what I demanded/expected/wanted out of a heroic dungeon (or even out of the normals as I’m leveling my alts), numbers didn’t come into play until the very end and even then, it’s not even a number I’m looking for.

…

Dark/Soth has come under a lot of fire for his attitude about heroics and what he expects over the past few days. It was really brave of him to put his opinions out there, knowing full well that not many people were going to see it his way. But he said his piece and the floodgates were opened. And we all read and responded and hopefully we all did some thinking, because I know he has:

Another interesting aspect for me to think more on is that when I group with you guys on our alts, I never stop and worry about that I’m doing more than double dps of G or J. I don’t care. I’m just having fun. I trust that you guys are doing a good job, and I just try to do the best I can. I trust that if I take aggro, you will heal me. I know G and J will assist the tank (most of the time =P). I care less about performance because I have that comfort level and trust that I know you guys are all dedicated to the success as a group.

And what happened then? Well, in WoWville they say that the Elitist’s small heart grew three sizes that day. And then – the true meaning of WoW came through, and the Elitist found the strength of *ten* Elitists, plus two!

(I didn’t ask for permission to post that snippet so I hope he doesn’t kill me, but I was really happy that he was able to look at the whole thing in a new light and realize maybe we’re not all quite so crazy after all. )

This needs to be required reading for all PUGs. If I am new to an instance I will ask for notes on the boss. Some will give me a knowledgeable reply, others will give a wise ass reply (if at all). This especially applies when I am the tank. Buffs is another topic. As a Pally I will turn to the group and ask for buff requests. Over half of the players won’t even reply… It is easy for the casters (Wisdom), but I have to guess for the DPS folks.

personally when im running my pally i just buff kings. I have found that 90% of the people are ok with this and if they want something else the ask :) cuts out any guess work and any buff overwriting from shamy totems warrior shouts etc

Kings me, please!
Fights aren’t long enough in heroics to really benefit from the extra mana regen, even when the tank is pulling at Mach 5 I can usually keep the blue bar going.
If you have a warrior in the group, don’t bother with Might, it gets overwritten. A lot of shaman drop mana spring which overwrites the wisdom (unless they fixed this? I know there was talk about it…). Kings is probably the safest to cast.

Was it just me or did anyone else giggle when they read “common fucking courtesy”? I can’t possibly be the only one with my mind in the gutter.

On a more serious note, I definitely agree with all of the above! It’s stupid that people who complain about the game being too hard or too elitist or too whatever are usually the ones that can’t even meet the expectations you listed above. And further, those expectations aren’t earth shattering – do you want to play a fun MMO or play effing solitaire?

And even more depressing is that the people that REALLY need to read this, aren’t the ones that will be reading it. And if “those” people did read it, there would be ZERO comprehension.

I take back my comment about feeling bad that I wished someone got beat up at the gym. It’s on again.

I’d add buffs to the expectations list, even though it probably falls under knowing one’s class reasonably well. I don’t necessarily expect anyone to blow a lot of reagents to buff the group (although 30 minute blessings are wonderful), but when buffing actually *benefits* you…it had better be up, because my totems are not going to pick up the slack. DKs who don’t bother with Horn of Winter for an entire dungeon run, I’m looking at you. Stat food and flasks are far beyond my expectations, but a buff that just costs you mana…DOOOOO IIITTTTT!

Yeah, I probably should have called that out under the knowing the class. I agree that food and flasks are probably overkill in a heroic.

If I haven’t run on my DK for a bit I tend to forget about HoW and then feel like a total noob when I’m like, where’s all my RP?

I’ve noticed on my little pally that I seem to be losing my aura when zoning in to a cross-realm instance. Or at least I’m guessing that’s when it’s happening… I usually don’t notice until after the second boss or so.

on my DK I’ve gotten into the habit when playing on her to renew my horn at the end of EVERY fight, much like I would recast water shield on my shammy, whether it needed to be done or not. This way I know I also have the buff as will the party.

Just a heads up, every spec’s optimal DK rotation includes using HoW. There are going to be times in your rotation, after you drop your diseases and use your strikes, where you have a free GCD or two. Use HoW in there. It boosts your RP by 10 when you use it, allowing you to get off more death coils/frost strikes over the course of a fight. Have fun. =)

As soon as I remember I have it, I’m all good with it. It’s just the first 15 minutes of warming up and remembering I’m not a caster and I should be behind the mob and where’s Arcane Blast? oh yeah, wrong character, did I get my diseases up? I’m missing something… what am I missing? I’m not missing the mob, although the tank is totally missing that caster off to the side and where the hell is the other DPS going? is the healer even in the same instance with us? Still behind the mob… still missing something… what the hell is it? Oh yeah, that Horn of Winter thing.

For the missing the caster question. Sometimes the tank will miss aggro on a caster. This allows the caster to attack another party member. I like it when a DK Death Grips the caster into my aggro coverage. For a PUG should I ask the tank before pulling that annoying caster in?

I’ve done a little DK tanking and I can handle 2-3 casters depending on the positioning of the pull. Hopefully I can start the fight on top of one caster, DG the second and Strangulate the third. It’s when the ret pally takes it upon himself to run over to the one I’m strangulating and beat it up in the corner that I get irritated.
Give it a 5 second wait to see if the tank may have overlooked the caster. If the healer is in danger, I would grip. If it’s a DPS, screw ’em. Just make sure you immediately revert your target to the tank’s primary so it’s easier for him to pull the gripped mob off you.
The other option is for you to strangulate, which will pull most casters into melee range. They all resort to sticks when silenced…

On my hunter, I watch that lone caster like a hawk, if it so much as thinks about my healer, I immediately switch to it, often times sending my pet to chew on it. This is ingrained so much in me that most times the healer will find a trap sitting at their feet. I miss the 1 min ice traps.

I know a lot of tanks won’t ask a DK to do the death grip pull unless they trust them, personally, I don’t ask until I’ve seen the DK in action a few pulls. If they seem to be reasonably capable, I will ask them to pull any caster I miss into the consecrate. Of course, as a pally tank, I normally take the caster into consideration and run the pull to them. Holy Frisbee works well against them. As a warrior/druid tank, it makes life a little more interesting but since I’ve dps’d behind both for a while, it can be adjusted.

TL;DR version: I think it’s up to the tank to ask, but if you are the DK, might ask the tank if they would like you to do it.